Both my necro and ranger are centered around AoE builds, necro with wells and ranger with traps, so this could end up really sucking for them. Hell, I guess most of my characters are to some extent. My favorite way to play is to pull as much as possible and AoE it down, but for some reason games seem to frown upon that. :P

Why? There are "needless" stuff but still okay. And there are cool stuff. What exactly are you saying?

I like that and quite honestly, AoE needed to go down (and I mean go down hard lol).
I like the Orr changes.. (won't get my hopes up tho..).
Bosses changes as well...
The balancing, well Ill believe when I see it...

Why? There are "needless" stuff but still okay. And there are cool stuff. What exactly are you saying?

I like that and quite honestly, AoE needed to go down (and I mean go down hard lol).
I like the Orr changes.. (won't get my hopes up tho..).
Bosses changes as well...
The balancing, well Ill believe when I see it...

I'll make one of my famous lists which most people will know from the one thread, just give me some time since I'm working on other things as well.
I'm going to start with part2 since that's most concrete and it's basically just an addendum of part1.

Is there a way to make text only appear if you click a button (like most forums have "spoiler" buttons that hide the text?

Q: How close do you feel each class fulfil the class philosophy
We use one set of balance numbers for wvw, pve, and spvp. We do this because people get acclimated to characters – we want people to play a class in a certain situation and feel comfortable in another
Some classes are filling their roles, some are not
We are brining up the weaker builds to be on par with the good builds.
So yes they are but there are more work to be done.

Q: Expain what you mean by progress in WvW
We are encourage people to defend, to get involved, to break away from large mass mentality of zerging
Reward the individual player for what they are doing rather than contribute scoring via server

Q: Culling fixes available in WvW, sPvP, or PvE, when?
Depends on testing – WvW atm is bad, PvP is not an issue, PvE affected for large scale events (i.e. Lost Shores, Shatter event)
We are testing the system in WvW and hopefully it will affect all across the board.

Q: Fractals
Adding reconnect to fractals, and coming up a solution for the level restrictions – those are coming up in the next build.
Able to start at the highest fractal level achieved by any group member – it will advance everyone who is eligible for advancement up one tier
You will be rewarded based on your personal level, not the level of the fractal you are in (i.e. if you are not 10+, you can’t get ascended rings by doing higher fractals etc)

Q: Dynamic system in open worlds – how will it evolve – make it more understandable, more rewards
Changes to Orr at end of month – adding some new effects, environment zones, rewards
Continue building lore/story – between content patches we will add in new events, new guild stuff.

Q: Stance on allowing people to see enemy nameplates in WvW
Mixed feeling – we want server to viewed as a whole and not introduce bitterness to individual players
Not completely opposed to the idea – be interesting to get bragging rights, more competitive nature
Not sure how to design around that at the moment
Need to make it voluntary, prevent harassment issues
WvW is about large scale massive battle mentality where individual players are not as important

Q: Advancement/prestige design for wvw
We want to keep things consistent – similar to some other stuff in the game. Can;’t talk much

Q: How does dev priorize development time – new content or old content bug fixes?
We want to to do bug fixes first then add in new content.
We looked at dungeons across the board, fractal bosses are more interesting – environment affect them etc. We want to do the same to the original dungeon bosses.
Specific teams to focus on different areas of the game to make sure no area is left behind.

Q: Do you think classes will have more weapon combinations sometime in the future? (i.e. Eles using greatswords)
Great question, you might be able to see it in the future – can’t comment more

Q: Examples to make boss more interesting
Different mechanics when bosses get to a different health stage etc like some of the fractal bosses.
We now have more better tools to develop boss scripts.

Q: WvW and ascended gear?
It is an idea being tossed around – use the badge system perhaps.
I am hopeful that it will.

Q: Custom areans – new game modes? cost to host?
Yes, cost money to host, you rent server from us.
You can’t create an entirely new gamemode but you can turn some features on/off.
I know you guys want new gamemodes like CTF

Q: GvG – Guild vs Guild
Guilds battle in guild halls – you had a flag, a guild lord etc in GW1.
We see it more as the team 5vs 5 stuff in GW2 and in custom arenas

Q: New game modes?
We want to use conquest as the base and develop around it, we are talking about deathmath, CTF and see if they can fit out game.
We can maybe we can implement some elements from other gamemodes.
Why do we keep to conquest? If you want something to grow, to do Esport, you want something that people can pick up.
New mode – pushing the boundaries of what conquest can do arriving sometime before the death of the universe.

Q will GW2 become a ESPORT?
Yes, we are working on things that GW2 needs to be an esport – i..e custom arenas, Spector mode, better streaming support
Releases later in the year.

Q: Do you agree with the statement the current metagame is boring
Current metagame is boring, could use some expansion
Bunker – a class is a class that hold down a position, has a lot of healing and self-suvability (i.e. a tank). We don’t want the bunker to go away completely. Bunkers give you an anchor in the map.
We don’t want to be case that every team needs a bunker.
Bring builds to all classes to what the bunkers are currently.
Eles are tough, guardians are tough, mesmers are hard to take care of, so are thieves.

Q: Do you find any profession to be out of balance like Ele bunker, roamer, thief one shot combo, mesmer portal?
Ele bunker is really strong, on our watchlist
Mesmer portal is giving us problems –giving that tool onto other classes

Q: Reward screen for the new crowns for the achievements
If you are playing a specific class, you have a reward that can be tailoring to your class
A chest containing stuff that your class that you can use.
Not class specific armor etc.

Q: Get crowns are achievement we already have?
First build only have crowns for daily and monthly achievements.
Later phase will have crowns are other achievement.
New daily and monthly achievements tied to new content – allow to pick specific rewards you care about.
Feb’s monthly will reward crowns
Crowns are a new type of currency

Q: Elaborate your plans for changing AoEs
This is not a quick fix, we are getting a lot of data.
If your skil does 10 damage to a single target, if you have another skill that have the same opportunity cost but deals 8 damage to 5 targets, the AoE skill is better – we don’t want you to use AoE skills on single target mobs.
Maybe add a new mechanic where mobs are resistant to AoE damage.
In PvP and WvW we see people using AOEs on enemy players rezzing other etc

Big issue, some classes are really strong in one field and suck in another. This can be due to various reasons, not enough damage, not enough survivability, not enough mobility and so on.
Balancing the game for all three at once is a silly goal, it doesn't work and a-net should know this from GW1. For instance mes portal. It's Great in WvW, It's Awesome in PvP and it's handy in PvE. You can say well it's really game breaking in WvW so we'll reduce the distance by X. This would mean that it's now balanced in WvW (since golems will have to walk) but people will drop it in PvP and PvE.

Great, this is needed. Too many people are only interested in zergs and the rest just want to do WvW but don't care about the rewards. However looking at rewards seems a bit weird. A better fix would an "out manned" sort of buff that gives you X amount more supply if there are less than 5 (just a place holder) people around you, so small groups can still start sieging places. This would "break" zergs and would drag people in smaller groups aswell (just taking sup camps can get boring...)

Not many people care about not being able to see everyone at once when fighting a dragon, the only real issue is WvW. Focus on that and that alone... (it looks like they are doing that)

This will be tough, I like it since I play many toons. I hate it since I don't want to start lvl 40+ farm groups and have people who are lvl 15 join me.

Just give me guild halls already gdi...

I seriously don't care about names, if its red it's dead but implementing of "show nameplate" on choice is a good idea.

Very vague, no clue what this is about at all.

Great

Vague/don't care

Better tools? I've already posted on another thread some mechanics that can be implemented which shouldn't require a whole lot of scripting

Make ascended gear downscale to exotic instead? Adding more gear doesn't fix this issue it just introduces another grind.

Why do I need to pay? In gw1 I didn't... (talking GH skirmish here)

Pretty hard to understand but it's basically a "Not happening", which I'm against. GvG (be it 5v5/8v8/10v10) is about coordination and timing. I get that it's hard to balance in GW2 but GW1 had far more skills + cross prof combinations+weapon combinations...

a) We don't want implementations of other game modes into conquest, we want other game modes... Swallow the pride, conquest isn't entertaining enough, and start rolling out other modes.
b) If you think that PvP needs to be easy to grasp why did you bring in cap all points at once mechanics and get Xmore points if you kill the npc? This is very confusing to "watchers"
c) TDM and CtF are probably the easiest to comprehend. And implementing these doesn't require weeks/months.

Custom arenas, do they mean new "tournament" zones or do they reference the "private server" stuff? If it's the first, they've promised this since before release... If the latter, why should I pay for a service just to remain competitive?

Try other game modes (maybe?)

Frigin fix them, stealth thief is just ridiculous (I play thief in sPvP), oh I didn't one shot you? Let me re-stealth and BS you for 5k. Mes portal is an issue regardless of only the mes having it or not. Just disable it for sPvP mesmers are viable without it... Why risk making another class extremely strong/op? The issue is in the mechanic.

So more RNG like loot boxes from sPvP? Oh that's fun I got the sickest heavy armor ingame too bad I'm a thief and still running around with my swindler set...

People needed more incentives to do the content so it's a good thing, I just hope they will give people who already did the achievements will get all the rewards they deserve as well.

This is probably the biggest issue I have with the Q&A.
a) The problem doesn't lie in AoE being too strong, it's due to single target being too weak. Ranger longbow is a great example of this. One of the best skills to use is Barrage (the only real aoe rangers get from weapons btw) if you know nerf AoE there won't be any reason to bring an LB (SB is already better but LB has very good burst if you do 3>5>2).
Why not just make single target damage better?
b)Of course people AoE rezzers and rezees. There are three reasons for this:
1: AoE usually is from max range => safer
2: There are multiple enemies, what better time is there to AoE?
3: Killing people with skills is pretty hard, try dpsing someone down while a thief is stealth rezing it's nearly impossible. So there's a couple of choices here again:
3.1: try to stomp the downed player (good luck with someone bashing your brains in, and if you succeed GL killing that guy...)
3.2: kill the rezzer (the rezee will heal up/dmg/annoy you in the mean time (ele immo, mes conf stack, thief dps, war kd, nec fear, rang dps+heal,...)
3.3: run away like the little girl you really are
3.4: AoE, this gets the rezzer down so he might stop rezing + you closed the gap between you and him (hp/cd wise). The rezee stays low on health (especially if you have poison) meaning you create time to swap to the rezzer.

What a surprise, there is one big change - and it's another fucking nerf. Yo ANet, a few of my characters' builds aren't gimped enough, please take away the one thing that they have going for them (AoE). Couldn't agree with your assessment more on this point Meledelion.

I'll withold judgement on the "crown" currency and Orr changes for now, that could go either way.

I do like the sound of the guild improvements though, and I'm happy they've been working hard to address culling.

The existence of the ascended gear tier still and always will grind my gears, as is the fact that their LFG system is still "a bit far off."

Fractal reconnect/level restriction changes - about fucking time, but it still doesn't change the fact that the whole fractal/ascended design is fundamentally terrible.

He does and so do I and any other "serious" dungeon farmer. The problem with fights isn't that they are being rez rushed, it's that they are in fact easy from start to finish.
The only "hard" boss is Giganticus Lupicus in Arah and even that's a stretch. Most people simply suck donkey balls and eventually you'll run out of dodges/blocks if you're kiting him solo (and you're not a guardian).

Seriously, give me one fight where people "rely" on rez rushing to kill the boss.